Site Mobile Navigation

Evolution’s Gold Standard

Feeling low? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when people feel bad, their sense of touch quickens and they instinctively want to hug something or someone. Tykes cling to a teddy bear or blanket. It’s a mammal thing. If young mammals feel gloomy, it’s usually because they’re hurt, sick, cold, scared or lost. So their brain rewards them with a gust of pleasure if they scamper back to mom for a warm nuzzle and a meal. No need to think it over. All they know is that, when a negative mood hits, a cuddle just feels right; and if they’re upbeat and alert, then their eyes hunger for new sights and they’re itching to explore.

It’s part of evolution’s gold standard, the old carrot-and-stick gambit, an impulse that evades reflection because it evolved to help infants thrive by telling them what to do — not in words but in sequins of taste, heartwarming touches, piquant smells, luscious colors.

Back in the days before our kind knew what berries to eat, let alone which merlot to choose or HD-TV to buy, the question naturally arose: How do you teach a reckless animal to live smart? Some brains endorsed correct, lifesaving behavior by doling out sensory rewards. Healthy food just tasted yummy, which is why we now crave the sweet, salty, fatty foods our ancestors did — except that for them such essentials were rare, needing to be painstakingly gathered or hunted. The seasoned hedonists lived to explore and nuzzle another day — long enough to pass along their snuggly, junk-food-bedeviled genes.

As with so many other aspects of life, we adults still play by the rules we learned in infancy. Feel bad, need a hug. Scary movie, grab the hand of your date. Hungry, nosh on salty chips not kelp noodles.

Photo

Credit
Liz Butler

What does this have to do with “consumer research?” Wouldn’t you know it, five experiments have pinpointed how to capitalize on the findings and connect with shoppers in different moods. Apparently, someone feeling low is likely to respond more to the velvety ooze of a hand lotion, while a cheerful person is likely to respond more to the product’s shiny bottle and festive packaging.

Is no mood safe from marketing and manipulation, you may wonder? Apparently not. They can ambush your animal senses, whatever state your brain may occupy, no matter if you’re in the dumps or riding high. If the meringuelike hand cream doesn’t entice you one day, the Eiffel Tower-shaped box might on another.

Companies have always been hoodwinking our fickle senses. Panels help design just the right “mouth feel” for new yogurts, the right crunch for potato chips, the right degree of pucker for lemon sorbet. Used-car dealers spray “new car scent” in their vehicles. Malls waft “eau de pizza” around the heads of hungry shoppers. Perfumers weave talcum powder into their aromatic tone poems, hoping to evoke memories of innocence and nurturing. Realtors bake bread or spray “cake bake” around the kitchen before showing a house to a potential buyer. It’s amazing that we have any willpower left at all.

Does knowing about this do any good? Can one outsmart the dictates of evolution? Sure, we do it all the time, whenever we use birth control, operate on a tumor, resist a second helping of lemon-glazed angel food cake or boost our senses in life-altering ways — with eyeglasses, telescopes, binoculars, loud speakers, electric lights, printing presses, computers, and so on. We may fantasize about possessing superhuman powers, but we are able to compensate. No, we can’t levitate and fly like birds, but we can zoom aloft in airplanes. We can’t hold our breath and patrol the ocean like whales, but we can strap on scuba tanks and clamber into submarines. We aren’t fleet-footed as a cheetah, but we can straddle a horse or a motorcycle. Superhuman? At times. Aware of where our drives are driving us? Rarely.

We become easily addicted to what used to be good for us, and might still be if we lived wild in nature. Or rather if we lived like our ancestors because our towns and cities are a kind of wilderness, too. Termites build mounds. Naked mole rats dig burrows. Wasps fabricate paper condos. We engineer cities. All are fascinating colonies spawned by some of earth’s more successful life-forms.

It’s just that we’ve adapted nature to us instead of the other way around. “Mind your manners!” “Use your wits!” “Wake up!” and other such heady exclamations remind us that we often serve as evolution’s handmaidens, reacting rather than thinking, following a well-trodden rut rather than scything a new path through the undergrowth, wanting for little but craving nonstop. Blindly craving. And that’s where the consumer research studies come in, their flagships flying.